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Hornets’ Switch to Pelicans Marks Latest Name Game

In a league in which the Lakers reside in Los Angeles and the Jazz are from Utah, the New Orleans Hornets officially announced Thursday night that they would no longer be on the list of teams with nicknames for regions other than their own. Starting next season, the franchise will be known as the Pelicans.

The announcement had been rumored since early December, and the choice of Pelicans as a replacement name was a poorly kept secret. Louisiana is known as the Pelican State, and the brown pelican is the state bird. It appears on Louisiana’s flag and seal and on the state’s commemorative quarter.

The pending change opens the door for one of the stranger possibilities in the history of N.B.A. record-keeping should the Charlotte Bobcats, an expansion team that replaced the Hornets after the team moved to New Orleans in 2002, attempt to reclaim the Hornets moniker.

If that happened, the team in Charlotte would still have a history dating only to 2004, when the Bobcats began play. The records and statistics of the Charlotte Hornets from 1988 to 2002 would remain with the Pelicans. Hornets here, Hornets there. Confusing, to say the least.

And then there are the Sacramento Kings, potentially headed to Seattle under new ownership. They could then reclaim the SuperSonics name, though the history of that franchise, which played in Seattle from 1967 to 2008, would presumably still be owned by the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Kings’ history, which began in Rochester in 1945 and included stops in Cincinnati and Kansas City, Mo., would remain with the team in Seattle.

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Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans with the logo of the N.B.A.’s rebranded Pelicans.Credit
Stacy Revere/Getty Images

It is enough to make your head spin, but it is standard operating procedure in a league that sees no problem having a Lakers team in Los Angeles that was originally named for the lakes in Minnesota (where the Lakers began their history) and a Jazz team in Utah that was originally named for the music scene in New Orleans, where that team originated.

Let’s not forget, either, that the Memphis Grizzlies name sounds odd because the team began play in Vancouver.

There has been no official decision as to whether the Bobcats would be allowed to take back the Hornets name in the future, and the process to rebrand usually takes two years. So for now the Hornets name stays in New Orleans.

“We will absolutely take direction from the N.B.A. on this issue,” Dennis Lauscha, the Hornets/Pelicans president, said on a conference call, adding that the league had yet to offer any.

The N.B.A., at the very least, seems consistent on the matter of how to treat franchise history, with the records and statistics remaining with the team after moving. In the N.F.L., things can get more convoluted. The Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and were renamed the Ravens, but when an expansion team started in Cleveland in 1999, they were given the Browns’ name and history, thus making the Ravens, in effect, the expansion team. Conversely, the Indianapolis Colts retain the records and statistics of their time as the Baltimore Colts.

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New Orleans Hornets owner Tom Benson wanted a name that reflected the culture of New Orleans.Credit
Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

The Hornets/Pelicans, meanwhile, have chosen to not repeat the curious decision to keep an ill-fitting name, not that the decision was made easily.

“As we moved through the process, we considered well over 100 names and many more logos,” Lauscha said. “We found ourselves continually coming back to the Pelicans.”

The team sees the choice of logo and name as a chance to showcase the bird, which was near extinction in the 1960s but recovered and was removed from the endangered species list in 2009. In that sense, it reflects the resiliency of an area overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that threatened the local pelican population.

“When Tom Benson bought this team, he threw out there very early that he had a goal of rebranding the team to better reflect the city and culture of New Orleans,” Lauscha said.

The Pelicans name was used by minor league baseball teams in the city from 1887 to 1959 and for one season in 1977. The change will go into effect at the end of this season, and the team’s new colors will be blue, red and gold.

But for the foreseeable future, there will be still be Grizzlies in Memphis. Be careful when you hike there.

Correction: January 28, 2013

An article on Friday about a decision by the New Orleans Hornets to change the team’s name to the Pelicans misidentified, in some editions, the bird population in Louisiana that was threatened by Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was, of course, the pelican population — not the penguin population.

A version of this article appears in print on January 25, 2013, on page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Hornets’ Switch to Pelicans Marks Latest Name Game. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe